Eggs will leave you on cloud nine
Woe to the mother who doesn’t keep up on what’s trending on Facebook and Instagram.
Or maybe I should just ask you to take pity on me, the clueless cook who knew nothing about cloud eggs, the pillowy egg dish that’s suddenly all the rage on social-media platforms.
Who knows, maybe it’s no longer a “thing.” But my daughters still wanted to know why we hadn’t tried it. Hadn’t I seen all those snack-sized cooking videos on the web? Wasn’t my Instagram feed full of picture after whimsical picture of the fluffy breakfast dish?
“They look super simple,” Olivia told me. “And super pretty and different.”
The girl must be learning a thing or two at college.
Trying them, I realized cloud eggs are about as easy an entree as you can imagine, and just plain gorgeous. Think mounds of billowy marshmallow fluff, only lighter, with an orb of glossy, dippy sunshine in the center.
It’s the type of dish you might use to coax a picky eater who professes not to like eggs, or serve at brunch when you have houseguests to impress.
With only about 160 calories per serving, they’re also a protein-rich, low-cal way to dish up a hot breakfast.
As for taste, the whites have a slightly spongy texture while the yolks are soft and silky. You can serve them on buttered toast or slide them right onto a plate. They’re best when hot, but I also ate a leftover cloud the next morning after warming it in the microwave and topping it with hot sauce. So what is its provenance? You might think it’s an extension of America’s love of all things meringue. But a version of the dish was actually served 200 years before we became a country.
In an article on NPR’s website, Serious Eats culinary director Daniel Gritzer guesses its roots lie in the classic French dessert,
or eggs in snow. Soft meringues are made with egg white and sugar and nestled in a vanilla custard. The dish dates back at least to 1651, when a recipe was published in “Le Cuisinier Francois,” a book that captured for the first time a distinctly modern way of French cooking.
Unlike today’s version, which is baked in a very hot oven, in the 17th century, the eggs were browned and served with a simple dusting of sugar.
You can find dozens of recipes for cloud eggs on the web, but the basic premise is the same. After separating the whites and yolks, you whip the whites until a stiff peak forms, folding in whatever little bits of goodness you like to perk things up, such as fresh chopped herbs, grated cheese, bits of bacon or ham, paprika or other spices. Then you mound the whites onto a parchment-covered cookie sheet, make a deep well into the center of each cloudlike form, and bake it for a few minutes.
After you pull them out, you add a yolk to the center of each cloud, and slide them back into the oven.
See? Olivia was right. Pretty darn easy, and just plain pretty.